To encourage you to participate in the last Walkable City book club meeting, tomorrow evening (Walkable City final book club November 8), some thoughts about the two steps in the ‘The Interesting Walk’ section (page 235 of the 10th Anniversary Edition).
Step 9: Make Friendly and Unique Faces
This step has five points: Invisible Parking, Sticky Versus Slippery Edges, Attack of the Starchitects, Too Much of a Thing, and Boring Nature. In invisible parking, Speck says structured parking should not be visible to people walking, but tucked away behind interesting buildings that draw in people walking. Of the parking garages in Sacramento, some are indeed hidden away, underground in some cases (good visually, but way too expensive to build), and behind commercial businesses in others. Other garages are glaringly obvious, presenting long stretches of sameness that discourages people walking, no matter how they go there (including the people who drove). Sticky edges have interest and variety, slippery edges are long stretches of sameness, often entire blocks where each foot look identical. Though thankfully Sacramento has less of the bland (I intended to type blank, but then, bland fits) than many cities. Government buildings are often the worst offenders. Walk along the north side of J Street between 14th and 15th Street, and you will know just how bad this can be. Starchitects is about cities selected star architects, who tend to design buildings that are interesting or beautiful, but have absolutely no connection to their surroundings. Too much is about how large developments look too much the same along their street faces, or if they do no, have fake variety. The solution is many buildings with a smaller face, built at different times by different developers (see Encouraging Fine-Grained Development by Andrew Price for an introduction). And finally, too much nature, in the city, can be just as boring as a suburb. We need small parks within walking distance of everyone, and of course we need street trees. But large expanses of park within city boundaries make for a less interesting place to walk, and push destinations further apart. An example it Land Park. It is wonderful, but it is just too much of a good thing. The park is mostly empty most of the time, and the parts that are more used are the zoo and Fairytale Town, the non-park parts of the park.
Step 10: Pick Your Winners
This step includes four points: Urban Triage, Anchors and Paths, The Lessons of LoDo, and Downtowns First. Urban triage means to focus effort and investment on places where it will make a big and immediate difference. Not places that are doing just fine, and not places that are hopeless, but places that can use a little help. This is not the Sacramento way. Anchors and paths means connecting two successful places that are close together but have an unwalkable or uninviting barrier between them, by fixing the walkability over short distances. The lessons of LoDo (lower downtown in Denver) is that an initial core of walkability and interest can spark transformation over a larger area. In LoDo, it was a brewery, and then restoration of the train station, and the area is now many square blocks that are largely successful. I’ve spent time there, and it is great, particularly the station. And focus on downtown means to not spread out investments everywhere in hopes they may make some difference, but rather on downtown where things are sort of good and have an existing structure of decent or historical old buildings (good bones is the common expression).
Part III: Update to the 10th Anniversary Edition
All of the book up through Step 10 is essentially unchanged since publication in 2012. The update section which follows Step 10 (page 263) goes into depth on several issues, addresses new trends over the 10 years, corrects some mistakes (particularly as it related to bicycles), and has a fascination section on responsibility for urban planners. Well worth a read, though there is anything directly related to these last two steps of the original book.
Book Club
What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Have a different vision, or a different approach? Come to the book club to listen to others and share your ideas. You do not need to have read this section of the book to participate, though you may enjoy it more if you have.
Getting Around Sacramento 